Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to another part of
Speaker 1: the same week as another episode that is a rewind
Speaker 1: episode about hotlines and why they're actually really amazing and
Speaker 1: why people had to fight to make them happen, and
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to Cool
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that billions
Speaker 1: of us make the world better every day by trying
Speaker 1: really fucking hard to make the world better in ways
Speaker 1: big and small. By I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This
Speaker 1: is a show about cool people who did cool stuff
Speaker 1: in history, and we always talk about these like big actions,
Speaker 1: you know, this huge movement that had a revolution, or
Speaker 1: this individual who accomplished all of these things. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about like the man who started suicide crisis hotlines, right,
Speaker 1: but like there's so many, so many, so many people
Speaker 1: more involved in that project. But even more than that,
Speaker 1: there's so many more people involved in the basic project
Speaker 1: of hearing your friends talk about how they're feeling without
Speaker 1: prejudice and without calling the cops on them. You know,
Speaker 1: Like that is a thing that we can give to
Speaker 1: each other every single day and happens every single day
Speaker 1: all around the world. Is that we help each other
Speaker 1: because one of the things that I've learned by researching
Speaker 1: history is that, look, I know that this sounds bad,
Speaker 1: but I mean in a positive way. There's no bottom
Speaker 1: to the amount of suffering that could be happening right now,
Speaker 1: right like you just you read about times in history
Speaker 1: where like things happened and that were really bad, and
Speaker 1: then you read about other times in history or things
Speaker 1: happened they were even worse, and you're like, there's just like,
Speaker 1: actually no bottom, there is no floor, and so it
Speaker 1: feels like we're not winning, when in fact we are.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're not winning because we haven't achieved
Speaker 1: our whatever your utopian dream is, right, but we instead
Speaker 1: stopped an infinite amount of suffering. Even though we haven't
Speaker 1: stopped all the suffering, we have to keep working. We'll
Speaker 1: never fully win, right, But instead we prove that we
Speaker 1: can have worthwhile and meaningful lives by the big and
Speaker 1: small ways that we work to help each other. That's
Speaker 1: my grand standing. Hopefully you're up for some grand standing,
Speaker 1: because this is an episode about suicide prevention, and specifically
Speaker 1: the crisis hotlines that are staffed by so many people
Speaker 1: who do so much work to try to help people
Speaker 1: every single day, and you know, so hopefully you knew
Speaker 1: that getting into it, that I was going to be
Speaker 1: pretty fucking earnest and talking about some sad shit like
Speaker 1: suicide on this particular episode. Anyway, there's no guest, it's
Speaker 1: just me and you, just a little private conversation between
Speaker 1: the two of us, just two of us. You're the
Speaker 1: only listener. Just kind of wild. Actually, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, should really tell your friends about the show,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of weird that I only have one
Speaker 1: listener and it's you, dear listener. You think I would
Speaker 1: know your name since you're the only listener, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Last time on Monday, we talked about Bernard Mays, who
Speaker 1: set up the first suicide prevention hotline in the United
Speaker 1: States in either nineteen sixty one or nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: and the sources disagree, and we talked about how it
Speaker 1: became nine to eight eight, the current crisis hotline that
Speaker 1: is available to anyone in the United States that unfortunately
Speaker 1: does call the cops. And where we left our cliffhanger
Speaker 1: was that trans Lifeline, who does not do non consensual intervention,
Speaker 1: had put out a report there's a lot of names
Speaker 1: on this report. They put a lot of work into
Speaker 1: it over the course of years. The report came out
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four. You can read it on their website.
Speaker 1: I linked to it among the many sources in the
Speaker 1: show notes, even more sources than usual this particular week.
Speaker 1: Actually want to talk about that for a second. I
Speaker 1: swear I'm going to get into my own script and
Speaker 1: end the cliffhanger you're on, But I want to talk
Speaker 1: about like my own nervousness around this episode, because this
Speaker 1: is a topic I take very seriously, but I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert in and the ways that we talk about
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff does matter. I read a decent
Speaker 1: number of stuff about like guidelines for journalists when talking
Speaker 1: about suicide, you know, and how to try to handle
Speaker 1: this kind of thing responsibly, and it's very hard. The
Speaker 1: reason I want to talk about this part of it
Speaker 1: is because I'm going to be critical of nine to
Speaker 1: eight eight as an infrastructure right now, while I'm also
Speaker 1: incredibly grateful for the work that it does right and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell people not to call it
Speaker 1: because a lot of the alternatives are too underfunded and
Speaker 1: they're not as successful in certain ways like don't have
Speaker 1: enough people to answer the phone, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: good that we try to do this thing. It's just
Speaker 1: the framework it's embedded within is very dangerous and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with it. And so I mean
Speaker 1: this as a loving critique and it's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: my critique. A lot of it's coming from trans Lifeline,
Speaker 1: who also meet it as a loving critique. And I
Speaker 1: was really impressed with the language that they constantly use
Speaker 1: when they're critical of nine eight eight. They're not saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: those people love cops in or boot liquors and we're
Speaker 1: the best, you know. Instead they're like, hey, we got
Speaker 1: to try, we got to try to be better. We
Speaker 1: got to try to get the police out of our
Speaker 1: communities to keep ourselves safe, and we've got to you know,
Speaker 1: care for each other. But I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: just I was pretty impressed with how they talk about it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Trans Lifelines report, based on years of research, puts their
Speaker 1: best guess that on average, cops are dispatched for three
Speaker 1: point six percent of nine eight eight calls, which is
Speaker 1: higher than the one point nine percent of calls that
Speaker 1: lead to emergency medical services. Being called, which means you're
Speaker 1: almost twice as likely to have the cops called on
Speaker 1: you as an ambulance. The same report says that callers
Speaker 1: who had non voluntary services dispatched on them included reports
Speaker 1: of quote, police violence, discrimination, involuntary hospitalization, forced medication, and
Speaker 1: physical and sexual assault. And at first glance, you might think, well,
Speaker 1: what sort of makes sense to call an ambulance on
Speaker 1: someone who's dying, whether they ask for it or not. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if I'm god, this happened once. I was like walking
Speaker 1: down the street and like a bicyclists got hit by
Speaker 1: a car in front of me. I just called the
Speaker 1: fucking ambulance. I didn't be like, hey, buddy, you want
Speaker 1: an ambulance? Yay, nay, how you feeling on that? I
Speaker 1: was just like, fuck, I'm calling an ambulance. That man
Speaker 1: just got hit by a car, you know, and that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. Right. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into the ethics of intervening in suicide because it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly charged debate that people's personal, moral, philosophical, and theological
Speaker 1: positions are deeply intertwined with. But there's obviously a reason
Speaker 1: many people might want to call the ambulance if someone
Speaker 1: is dying for whatever reason. But the thing is a
Speaker 1: lifeline that can call the cops on you based on
Speaker 1: what you say is just a fundamentally different thing than
Speaker 1: a crisis line where you can be honest. Everyone I
Speaker 1: know is used to lying to doctors and therapists in
Speaker 1: order to navigate the strange bureaucracy that permeates our world. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I know people who don't go to therapy because therapists
Speaker 1: are mandated reporters, and they're like, what's the point of
Speaker 1: going to a therapist? I can't be honest to You
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to do that when you're calling a lifeline.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have to play games around how you want
Speaker 1: to answer specific questions based on what you're hoping the
Speaker 1: outcome will be. I actually think that there's a way
Speaker 1: from this to understand the fundamental problem with like law
Speaker 1: as a framework with which to try to build a
Speaker 1: positive society. But knowing that the police might be called
Speaker 1: means that people who call, if they choose to call
Speaker 1: it all, can't be honest. It's a fucking suicide hotline,
Speaker 1: and if you call, they ask have you had any
Speaker 1: suicidal thoughts? In the past few days, and if you
Speaker 1: say yes, they have to run through the script to
Speaker 1: figure out if you're an immediate threat, and if you are,
Speaker 1: they call emergency services, usually the cops. Isn't this defeating
Speaker 1: the whole point of a hotline, right? Like not everyone
Speaker 1: who calls this is having suicidal thoughts, But that's like
Speaker 1: it's purpose, you know. You also get asked have you
Speaker 1: taken any action to harm yourself today? And this conflates
Speaker 1: self harm with suicide, which is I think a fundamental
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of the ways in which people hurt themselves. This
Speaker 1: study that was put together by trans Lifeline has a
Speaker 1: lot of interviews with people who have had these experiences.
Speaker 1: One participant in the study about nine eight eight said quote,
Speaker 1: of course I felt like hurting myself. Of course I
Speaker 1: want to be honest and to be able to talk
Speaker 1: about those I think it would be really helpful for
Speaker 1: me to have acknowledged how I was actually feeling in
Speaker 1: those moments. But I just know that if you say
Speaker 1: yes to those questions about self harm, those questions aren't
Speaker 1: to have a supportive conversation. It's like those questions are
Speaker 1: to involuntarily hospitalize you or call the police on you,
Speaker 1: or do something that isn't helpful and is really traumatizing
Speaker 1: and harmful. Another participant wrote, it becomes about managing the
Speaker 1: operator's emotions and their concerns. It also becomes about are
Speaker 1: they going to flag me up the line to their supervisor?
Speaker 1: Do I have to worry about someone coming to my location?
Speaker 1: Do I have to worry about the cops being called?
Speaker 1: Am I going to be able to stay in my
Speaker 1: own home and keep my liberty? Also, between twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty one, the police killed at least one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy eight people in the United States during
Speaker 1: wellness checks. These are not nine eight eight specific numbers.
Speaker 1: That's just the number of people killed by police in
Speaker 1: between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one, and wellness check specifically.
Speaker 1: It's good that there is an alternative to calling the cops.
Speaker 1: I'm certain that separating out nine eight eight from nine
Speaker 1: to one to one will overall reduce the number of
Speaker 1: people killed by police during wellness checks. And I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say no one should ever call hotlines associated
Speaker 1: with nine eight eight. It's just it's trickier than it
Speaker 1: needs to be. Unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives are
Speaker 1: underfunded and overwhelmed, and frankly, their staff is sometimes less
Speaker 1: likely to be as consistently trained. It's just that nine
Speaker 1: eight eight is not so detached from the police as
Speaker 1: it presumably should be. This is a long way from
Speaker 1: calling a nice BBC broadcaster who will listen to you
Speaker 1: without judgment. But do you know what, it's not a
Speaker 1: long way from. Actually it is a really long way from.
Speaker 1: This is really a stretch. I'm just really stretching here
Speaker 1: to try and try and find a glimmer of connection
Speaker 1: between the script that I'm reading these advertisers, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you all coming along with me on that
Speaker 1: that glorious big stretch. Here's ads and Rebecca, I don't
Speaker 1: work in suicide prevention. I am not a social worker.
Speaker 1: To me, I can see the value in both evidence
Speaker 1: based attempts to reduce the number of deaths by suicide
Speaker 1: and also just creating platforms so that people who are
Speaker 1: suffering can talk to people and be heard, not even
Speaker 1: necessarily seen stopping them as the sole purpose, right, but
Speaker 1: maybe listening to them. And I think that because I
Speaker 1: think it'll reduce the number of suicides, I'm not a whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm going to trank. Keep my own opinions out of
Speaker 1: this as much as possible. Obviously I have strong opinions
Speaker 1: about the way all this interacts with police. But yeah,
Speaker 1: nine eight eight seems to me like a perfect example
Speaker 1: of taking a really good idea and by relying on
Speaker 1: the work of really good people, doing something kind of
Speaker 1: sketchy by tying it into the government. As Lifelines report
Speaker 1: says that nine eight eight quote represents an expansion of
Speaker 1: location tracking capabilities and non consensual practices in social support services,
Speaker 1: disregarding the voices of hotline users, psychiatric survivors, human rights organizations,
Speaker 1: and crisis care experts who condemned the practice of non
Speaker 1: consensual intervention. So these days, if you go to San
Speaker 1: Francisco's Suicide Prevention's website and go to their fact and
Speaker 1: click on anonymity, they say, quote, the only times we
Speaker 1: lift confidentiality are in times of immediate physical danger, in
Speaker 1: which case we will only contact emergency services. And that's
Speaker 1: not anonymity. I don't want to say that no organization
Speaker 1: should work with the government, because if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that this administration has reminded us, it's that there are
Speaker 1: good things that the government is the one doing. We
Speaker 1: remember this because the government is currently systematic stripping all
Speaker 1: of its own good qualities away, and so in July
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Speaker 1: Hotline dismantled it's LGBTQ plus services. They explain this with
Speaker 1: perhaps the single most cursed sentence I have ever read,
Speaker 1: and I'm so sorry I'm going to say it to
Speaker 1: you now quote the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis
Speaker 1: Lifeline will no longer silo LGB plus Youth Services also
Speaker 1: known as the Press three option, to focus on serving
Speaker 1: all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press
Speaker 1: three option. Where do I begin, Well, it will no
Speaker 1: longer silo US, as if we should be grateful that
Speaker 1: we're no longer being kept away from everyone else, even
Speaker 1: though obviously the purpose of that is so that we
Speaker 1: can reach people who are specifically trained and or have
Speaker 1: the similar experiences us. And no one literally no one
Speaker 1: good says LGB or LGB plus, the T and the
Speaker 1: Q have been purposefully removed because we literally don't exist
Speaker 1: in this government's view. Now, of course, this language doesn't
Speaker 1: filter down to members of nine eight eight. The fact
Speaker 1: that nine eight eight is saying this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: its members share these opinions or will act in that way.
Speaker 1: Individual lifelines continue to describe themselves as they wish, but
Speaker 1: they do all have to commit to nonconsensual intervention after
Speaker 1: nine eight eight cut Queer specific care out of its services.
Speaker 1: Trans Lifeline who are the people who wrote that critical
Speaker 1: report of nine eight eight said quote Through our advocacy efforts,
Speaker 1: we have recognized that the well meaning folks at nine
Speaker 1: eight eight have made improvements to their work and become
Speaker 1: more sensitive to the needs of our community. We are
Speaker 1: deeply disappointed that they no longer have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: continue growing their understanding and service to our community. She
Speaker 1: knew what nine eight eight was doing to improve themselves
Speaker 1: after that report, but of course any hard work they'd
Speaker 1: done was destroyed by the new administration, who, in their
Speaker 1: reverse mitas way, turn everything they touch into shit. But importantly,
Speaker 1: there are lifelines that are not part of the nine
Speaker 1: eight eight project that specifically do not call the police.
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on trans Lifeline, but just to
Speaker 1: shout out some of the other ones, there's black Line
Speaker 1: at one eight hundred, six oh four five eight four
Speaker 1: to one, which prioritizes BIPOC and LGBTQ plus folks. There's
Speaker 1: the Wildflower Alliance Peer Support Line at one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight four oh seven four five one five, which is
Speaker 1: a warm line for not as much crisis. There's the
Speaker 1: Fireside Project at one six two three two five zero
Speaker 1: seven three nine three, which is for people dealing with
Speaker 1: mental health during and after psychedelic experiences. There's Strong Heart's
Speaker 1: Native Helpline at one eight four four seven six y
Speaker 1: two eight four eight three, which is for Indigenous folks
Speaker 1: dealing with intimate partner or sexual violence. And there's trans Lifeline,
Speaker 1: which grew out of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. More
Speaker 1: like this, transgender remembers that she has to pivot to
Speaker 1: ads and Rebecca and I feel as though I have
Speaker 1: cursed myself with these ad transitions, because the trans Day
Speaker 1: of Remembrance is not about remembering ads. It is about
Speaker 1: remembering a thirty four year old black trans woman named
Speaker 1: Rita Hester and all of the other trans people who've
Speaker 1: had their lives ended by violence. Rita Hester died in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. She was born in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: in Hartford, Connecticut, and she was a girl from the jump.
Speaker 1: She knew she was Rita pretty much right away, according
Speaker 1: to her sister. Her family supported her, even if they
Speaker 1: didn't always get her pronouns right, which is an experience
Speaker 1: familiar to plenty of trans people. Rita moved to Boston
Speaker 1: in her twenties and started hanging out in the rock scene,
Speaker 1: going to drag bars, living life to the fullest. She
Speaker 1: was also a sex worker, which is left out of
Speaker 1: every almost every account of her life. A shout out
Speaker 1: to Them magazine, who was actually willing to say what
Speaker 1: Rita did for work. Because violence against trans people is ignored,
Speaker 1: violence against black trans people is ignored, violence against sex workers,
Speaker 1: and especially black trans sex workers is ignored. Someone could
Speaker 1: not handle Rita living her life to the fullest and
Speaker 1: stabbed her to death. She was dead, named and misgendered
Speaker 1: an article after article after she died. Her killer was
Speaker 1: never found, though two white men were seen leaving the
Speaker 1: building that night, and her white boyfriend simply disappeared after
Speaker 1: she died. No one heard from him ever. Again, the
Speaker 1: most likely thing is that she took home a white
Speaker 1: man or two from the bar and they killed her.
Speaker 1: None of this, of course, none of this sort of
Speaker 1: violence is new. I don't expect to have to explain
Speaker 1: to my listeners, but trans people, especially trans women of color,
Speaker 1: especially trans women of color who are sex workers, are
Speaker 1: murdered at a terrifyingly disproportionate rate. People have refused to
Speaker 1: let Rita Hester's name disappear from history. Her mother, Kathleen,
Speaker 1: never stopped fighting, and a trans woman named Gwendolen Smith
Speaker 1: soon put up a website called Remembering Are Dead that
Speaker 1: within a year became the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which
Speaker 1: is November twentieth every year. Murderers with knives aren't the
Speaker 1: only folks who kill trans people. Sometimes, systemic poverty, discrimination,
Speaker 1: lack of access to medical care, and all those compounding
Speaker 1: factors work together to kill trans people through suicide. So
Speaker 1: after the Trans Day of Remembrance in twenty fourteen, some
Speaker 1: folks got together to start the trans Lifeline, a suicide
Speaker 1: hotline for trans people staffed by trans people. They started
Speaker 1: it based on three principles. One all operators must be trans.
Speaker 1: Two peer support from shared lived experiences is vital, and
Speaker 1: three they don't call emergency services without the caller requesting
Speaker 1: that now to be very clear, or to be very specific,
Speaker 1: there actually are, because I was like being like, oh,
Speaker 1: these other people will call the emergency services. Trans Lifeline
Speaker 1: can also call emergency services depending There are three reasons
Speaker 1: why trans Lifeline might call someone. First is if you ask. Second,
Speaker 1: if there's a credible threat to a third party, so
Speaker 1: not like I'm going to kill myself, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to kill this other guy, or as laws require, if
Speaker 1: there's proof of child abuse. They've written a lot about
Speaker 1: why they don't do non consensual intervention to quote them quote.
Speaker 1: In October twenty fifteen, trans Lifeline surveyed about eight hundred
Speaker 1: trans people across the United States about their experiences with
Speaker 1: suicide hotline use. Approximately seventy percent of the respondent specified
Speaker 1: that they felt unsafe calling a hotline while in crisis.
Speaker 1: Approximately a quarter of respondents stated that they had interacted
Speaker 1: with law enforcement or emergency personnel due to a crisis call.
Speaker 1: One in five had been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold.
Speaker 1: Because lifelines don't work if people are afraid to call them.
Speaker 1: They don't work if people don't trust the people they're
Speaker 1: talking to. Trans people, in particular distrust the police, but
Speaker 1: also all of the other various services that might be
Speaker 1: called because we are routinely denied care or mistreated, like
Speaker 1: just on a really really regular basis. Interacting with legal
Speaker 1: frameworks is often really complicated for us because we don't
Speaker 1: know who's a bigot. Our paperwork doesn't always match our
Speaker 1: names and presentations, and it's not just like, oh it
Speaker 1: hurts our feelings to be misgendered. No, they do violence
Speaker 1: to you. Sometimes they deny you basic human shit. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to the show, you probably kind of know
Speaker 1: these things. And I don't need a grandstand. But also,
Speaker 1: we are twice as likely to live below the poverty
Speaker 1: line as the CIS population, and people sure don't want
Speaker 1: to pay any ambulance bills. And finally, to quote trans
Speaker 1: Lifeline again quote for many in our community, chronic suicidal
Speaker 1: ideation is a response to trauma and can be managed.
Speaker 1: So we want to talk to people who understand that, right,
Speaker 1: which includes theoretically plenty of people who are SIS who
Speaker 1: also have as a response to trauma, Like you know,
Speaker 1: certain thoughts are just like ever all that far away
Speaker 1: from them. And when we can't talk about that, I
Speaker 1: don't want to wee this actually, because this is not
Speaker 1: my experience as a transperson, but it is the experience
Speaker 1: of so many people. I love when people can't talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that those thoughts are just kind of
Speaker 1: never that far away. It makes it harder for them
Speaker 1: to like process them in functional and useful ways. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't have numbers of this, but
Speaker 1: it sure seems like it puts them in more danger,
Speaker 1: you know. And so trans Lifeline they set up and
Speaker 1: they start doing their work and they're still around. They also,
Speaker 1: within a couple of years, set up a microgrant project
Speaker 1: which provides small grants for trans people to cover the
Speaker 1: cost of name and ID paperwork, which is cool as hell.
Speaker 1: It's very complicated, like whether or not it's a complicated
Speaker 1: threat analysis, but people whether they should change their name
Speaker 1: and ID. Some of it has to do with dysphoria
Speaker 1: and euphoria round gender and presentation, and some of it
Speaker 1: has to do just with safety. So some of it
Speaker 1: has to do with like, it sure would be nice
Speaker 1: if my passport looked like me, right, I don't know. Now,
Speaker 1: the trans Lifeline isn't perfect either, but the things that
Speaker 1: are messy about it are so messy to research. Oh
Speaker 1: my lord, I like researching history. That's like history happened
Speaker 1: in historical times. Ideally the number should start with a one,
Speaker 1: or there should be before the twenty first century. That's
Speaker 1: what I like. Current events are messier, they have more
Speaker 1: moving parts, more raw data is usually available. But I'm
Speaker 1: not a historian. I'm a pop historian. I don't do
Speaker 1: the more than I have to the raw processing of
Speaker 1: stuff to find out what the story is. If you
Speaker 1: research trans Lifeline like I spent so much of this
Speaker 1: week trying to do, you're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: of people talking shit about it on the internet. Some
Speaker 1: of this stuff is undoubtedly true. The two founders of
Speaker 1: the trans Lifeline I'm not naming because I just their
Speaker 1: names are dragged enough and I don't know if we'll
Speaker 1: get to it. The two founders of the Translfeline were
Speaker 1: asked to leave the project in twenty seventeen after more
Speaker 1: than three hundred thousand dollars in funds was found to
Speaker 1: be misappropriated. Trans Lifeline wrote quote, there had been significant
Speaker 1: spending of trans Lifeline funds outside the scope of our
Speaker 1: current budget. Since that time, the project has put a
Speaker 1: large amount of effort into financial transparency. All of their
Speaker 1: numbers and reports, their impact reports. All of these things
Speaker 1: are publicly available. They're also five to one C three,
Speaker 1: so a lot of things are publicly available no matter what.
Speaker 1: I am not certain, however, what happened to that three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. There are several accounts of what it
Speaker 1: was online the Okham's raiser. The most likely thing is
Speaker 1: they probably just fucking spent it. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: most discussions about it say it was spent on projects
Speaker 1: that just wouldn't qualify as five to one C three,
Speaker 1: that were not approved by the board, possibly on bail
Speaker 1: and legal protections for various trans people who are incarcerated.
Speaker 1: That's like the thing I found hints of more information
Speaker 1: might be available, but I tried. This is what I
Speaker 1: came up with, and if they did that, I don't know. Man,
Speaker 1: good trans prisoners need support. But then again, an early
Speaker 1: major funder of the project of trans Lifeline said explicitly
Speaker 1: that she was defrauded, So maybe they just spent it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Again, these are people who haven't been
Speaker 1: involved in the project for eight years. The other thing
Speaker 1: is the way that this misappropriation was discovered. Well, fucking
Speaker 1: Kiwi Farms takes credit for it. This is probably the
Speaker 1: first time I've said Kiwi Farms on this show, and
Speaker 1: I'm sad I have to do it. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what Kiwi farms is, I am glad and I
Speaker 1: am sorry to do this too. Kiwi Farms is a
Speaker 1: troll community that seeks to drive trans people to suicide
Speaker 1: that brags of their kill count. They specifically weaponize the
Speaker 1: Internet and trolling and all of these things to try
Speaker 1: to kill us. Kiwi Farms is bad, and they are
Speaker 1: the ones who take credit for discovering the misappropriation of funds.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that the funds weren't misappropriated. It just
Speaker 1: means that was brought to people's attention by people who
Speaker 1: want to destroy trans Lifeline because they want us to
Speaker 1: not have help, because they want us to die. When
Speaker 1: I tried to research the current state of trans Lifeline,
Speaker 1: I found a lot of people talking about it on
Speaker 1: various forums like Reddit, and a lot of those people
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be totally on the level. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are saying phrases the same as
Speaker 1: each other. They were saying these phrases basically saying like
Speaker 1: trans Lifeline is a scam and a lot of the
Speaker 1: specific phrasing I also found in various reports from Kiwi
Speaker 1: Farms about how it is successfully exposed the embezzlement of
Speaker 1: the funds. So there sure is an implication that at
Speaker 1: least some of the people who are talking shit about
Speaker 1: trans Lifeline on the internet in forums are terminally online
Speaker 1: murderers who are trying to kill us by destroying trans Lifeline.
Speaker 1: But just because people are against it, God, it's just
Speaker 1: the waters are muddy as hell. There do seem to
Speaker 1: be a lot of people saying that they're having trouble
Speaker 1: getting through to trans Lifeline. Other people say, yeah, when
Speaker 1: I did get through, I spent two and a half
Speaker 1: hours talking to a counselor about our shared experiences and
Speaker 1: it turned everything around for me. And I suspect the
Speaker 1: most likely situation is this trans Lifeline does not have
Speaker 1: a large budget. Now they get these like fairly big
Speaker 1: name donations and like, you know, oh, twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: was raised by this, like you know, a Twitch streamer,
Speaker 1: or those protect the Dolls shirts that people were wearing,
Speaker 1: including like Pedro Pascal and stuff, or like fundraisers for Translfeline,
Speaker 1: and that rules and that money. When it's raised, it
Speaker 1: goes a long way with like a scrappy thing. But
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars here and there has nothing on the
Speaker 1: one point five billion dollars available to nine eight eight services.
Speaker 1: There are only so many volunteers, and of course they
Speaker 1: only hire trans counselors, which limits their pool further. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: demand for services trans counseling it's skyrocketing, and it just
Speaker 1: keeps skyrocketing. People are like, oh, it's skyrocketed in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen after this or that anti trans law, well, like
Speaker 1: man twenty eighteen sounds like a little dream fairy land
Speaker 1: compared to twenty twenty five in America, And there are
Speaker 1: studies that show causality between anti trans legislation and transsuicidality.
Speaker 1: Everyone I know is struggling one way or another right now.
Speaker 1: And what's more, the anti trans and more broadly anti
Speaker 1: LGBTQ plus language that nine eight eight has adopted is
Speaker 1: likely pushing more people towards an already overwhelmed system. The
Speaker 1: state has never been much of an ally to trans people,
Speaker 1: but with the states capture by fascism, it's never been
Speaker 1: more important for us to have resources that are independent,
Speaker 1: even if it's messy again though nine eight eight is
Speaker 1: also still around and trans people can use it. It
Speaker 1: is complicated, but the people who work it do good things.
Speaker 1: I am not a social worker. I am a fiction
Speaker 1: writer and a pop historian. I'm going to disclaim that
Speaker 1: over and over and over again throughout this episode. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you if you're struggling. I
Speaker 1: can tell you that you should reach out for help, though,
Speaker 1: and that it's available. The trans Lifeline number in the
Speaker 1: US is eight seven seven five six five eight eight
Speaker 1: six zero. In Canada it's eight seven seven three three
Speaker 1: zero six three six six and their hours are every
Speaker 1: day from one pm to nine pm Eastern. Talk to
Speaker 1: your friends and don't judge your friends. You talk to
Speaker 1: you and I don't know. Remember that everything changes. The
Speaker 1: way you're feeling right now is not how you always feel,
Speaker 1: and it's not how you've always felt, even if it's
Speaker 1: really hard to remember that in the moment. I want
Speaker 1: all of us to win. I want all of us
Speaker 1: to get to stand side by side together against this nightmare,
Speaker 1: and yeah, good luck, take care of each other. Cool
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. A more podcasts in the cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website goolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app I'm a Podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. I don't know any